Serva Community (32-bit) for Windows

User Reviews

• OK for basic transfers

  BumTiTTyJune 23, 2015

  Pros

  Works mostly

  Cons

  Cant do multiple files or modern filenames

  Summary

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• The Swiss Army Knife for Deployments

  JimLahey2222January 13, 2014

  Pros

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  Cons

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  Summary

  A little over 1MB in size with no installer and all these features? This is unheard of in today's world of software bloat. Serva is a fantastic tool that allows you to easily integrate installation sources from different providers. I've used this tool to integrate RedHat media and an MDT share under a single PXE boot menu. The documentation is very thorough and useful. The developers are also very quick to respond to your questions and provide detailed answers. This tool is a must for any system/network administrator responsible for deploying software.

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• PXE install a new OS without any hassle

  mawtexJanuary 18, 2013

  Pros

  1) A network boot (PXE) tool for installing a new OS that simply works 2) Very little footprint (you unzip a few files) 3) No DHCP hassle - will play nice with any existing DHCP servers 4) Simply copy OS install files from your CD to a folder. That's it - no lengthy or tricky image files to produce 5) The guidance is truly excellent 6) Worked flawlessly all the way - all other PXE products I have tried in the past have been *utter* pain 7) Works any any Windows machine and require no outside config (other than creating a file share) 8) Obviously created by a guy that cares about users 9) Really really fast.

  Cons

  1) You have to manually share a folder with a name differing from the folder itself. Windows 8 makes this a small hassle *) 2) You should make sure to follow the guide at http://www.vercot.com/~serva/howto/WindowsPXE1.html - this tool is a freaking swiss army knife *) You can view this as a positive thing though - Serva let you keep 100% control and won't change *anything* on your machine.

  Summary

  Tasked with reinstalling my moms age old machine and without any physical media or large enough USBs lying around PXE was my only option. Having done PXE installs in the past I braced myself for a long and frustrating evening. Googling like hell for some glimpse of a hope I came across a blog comment dryly stating Serva was the best out there, so I tried that (as the third option that night). With Serva things changed completely - I literally had PXE booting the target machine after 20 minutes. If you are going to install a new machine, consider doing it with PXE and Serva. Read the Serva PXE guide and you will be just fine.

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• The sysadmin new net-boot/multi-server swissknife

  ravil1001September 11, 2011

  Pros

  1) 7 protocols including HTTP / FTP / proxy DHCP 4) GUI handled DHCP options & MAC filter 5) Amazing context sensitive help 6) Protocols individually bindable to different interfaces 7) Very stable even on 64 version (v1.4.0 and up)

  Cons

  1) siaddr not manually configurable 2) does not run as a service

  Summary

  Rock solid multiserver defeating tftpd32 on several points

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